three weeks in bed before she started, and was obliged to return to it
two days after she arrived, and there to remain on her back; but this
uncomfortable position did not alter her love for flowers and animals.

The first of these tastes was abundantly gratified, as I mentioned
before, by the quantities of blossoms which were sent her from
friends; as well as by the weekly nosegay which came from her own
Little Garden, and made her realize that the year was advancing from
winter to spring, when crocuses and daffodils were succeeded by
primroses and anemones.

Of living creatures she saw fewer. The only object she could see
through her window was a high wall covered with ivy, in which a lot of
sparrows and starlings were building their nests. As the sunlight fell
on the leaves, and the little birds popped in and out, Julie enjoyed
watching them at work, and declared the wall looked like a fine
Japanese picture. She made us keep bread-crumbs on the window-sill,
together with bits of cotton wool and hair, so that the birds might
come and fetch supplies of food, and materials for their nests.

Her appreciation of fun, too, remained keen as ever, and, strange as
it may seem, one of the very few books which she liked to have read
aloud was Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"; the dry
humour of it--the natural way in which everything is told from a boy's
point of view--and the vivid and beautiful descriptions of river
scenery--all charmed her. One of Twain's shorter tales, "Aurelia's
unfortunate Young Man," was also read to her, and made her laugh so
much, when she was nearly as helpless as the "young man" himself, that
we had to desist for fear of doing her harm. Most truly may it be said
that between each paroxysm of pain "her little white face and
undaunted spirit bobbed up ... as ready and hopeful as ever." She was
seldom able, however, to concentrate her attention on solid works, and
for her religious exercises chiefly relied on what was stored in her
memory.

This faculty was always a strong one. She was catechized in church
with the village children when only four years old, and when six,
could repeat many poems from an old collection called "The Diadem,"
such as Mrs. Hemans' "Cross in the Wilderness," and Dale's "Christian
Virgin to her Apostate Lover"; but she reminded me one day during her
illness of how little she understood what she was saying in the days
when she fluently recited such lines to her n